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Staff Writer

Jason Aaron takes a break from the ongoing craziness of life at the Jean Grey School and gives us a glimpse of the future. As I’ve said before, I’m a sucker for alternate realities and possible futures, so I really enjoyed this issue, and with the upcoming ‘Battle For The Atom’ crossover, this is probably not some throwaway future, this is the future the rest of the X-Men books are heading towards too.

We don’t see any of the future X-Men that Marvel teased (although Xorn is mentioned), but that doesn’t matter, this is a story all about Wolverine. In fact, he and Eye-Boy (sorry, Eye-Man) are the only Future X-Men we really learn about at all. After commenting during the last story arc on the surprising bad-assery of Eye-Boy, it was so cool to see that he lives up to that potential in the future. Eye-Man is awesome, he lives in a floating satellite made of a Sentinel’s head and he watches all of the Earth. He’s a deadly shot with a laser and he has an awesome space-suit with glowing red eyes. I want an Eye-Man solo series and I want it now! He’s the new Spider-Man 2099 but better.

Future Wolverine wants to send a message back to the present to warn our Wolverine about the dangerous shit that’s headed this way, and Aaron teases us with what he has planned, there’s the Hellfire Academy (that we already knew about), but he’s also planning on bringing in Azazel, who presumably is behind the Bamfs, there’s something called ‘The Black Order’, Sabretooth has something going on, and an Apocalypse Crusade? What the! It’s so cool to see Aaron plant seeds like this.

Oh yeah, and there’s stuff going on in the present-day too, Wolverine makes an interesting speech, and there are exciting developments with the Hellfire Academy, as both Dog and Idie join up. Speaking of Dog, I like how Aaron is using him to humanise Wolverine a lot, how he’s desperate to find what’s in his brother’s box, how Beast didn’t even know he had a brother, how he asks to be called James. It’s powerful stuff for a character who is often too unaffected by everything. Aaron is always challenging and changing Logan, and it’s made him more interesting than he’s been in ages. That final revelation about the contents of Dog’s box was very powerful. This was the final issue of Ramon Perez’s stint as artist, and it was a good one to go out on, I’ve really enjoyed his stuff here, it’s perfect for the wild and woolly tone that Aaron, Bachalo and Bradshaw have established, I hope he gets another gig at Marvel.

Staff Writer

Jason Aaron takes a break from the ongoing craziness of life at the Jean Grey School and gives us a glimpse of the future. As I’ve said before, I’m a sucker for alternate realities and possible futures, so I really enjoyed this issue, and with the upcoming ‘Battle For The Atom’ crossover, this is probably not some throwaway future, this is the future the rest of the X-Men books are heading towards too.

We don’t see any of the future X-Men that Marvel teased (although Xorn is mentioned), but that doesn’t matter, this is a story all about Wolverine. In fact, he and Eye-Boy (sorry, Eye-Man) are the only Future X-Men we really learn about at all. After commenting during the last story arc on the surprising bad-assery of Eye-Boy, it was so cool to see that he lives up to that potential in the future. Eye-Man is awesome, he lives in a floating satellite made of a Sentinel’s head and he watches all of the Earth. He’s a deadly shot with a laser and he has an awesome space-suit with glowing red eyes. I want an Eye-Man solo series and I want it now! He’s the new Spider-Man 2099 but better.

Future Wolverine wants to send a message back to the present to warn our Wolverine about the dangerous shit that’s headed this way, and Aaron teases us with what he has planned, there’s the Hellfire Academy (that we already knew about), but he’s also planning on bringing in Azazel, who presumably is behind the Bamfs, there’s something called ‘The Black Order’, Sabretooth has something going on, and an Apocalypse Crusade? What the! It’s so cool to see Aaron plant seeds like this.

Oh yeah, and there’s stuff going on in the present-day too, Wolverine makes an interesting speech, and there are exciting developments with the Hellfire Academy, as both Dog and Idie join up. Speaking of Dog, I like how Aaron is using him to humanise Wolverine a lot, how he’s desperate to find what’s in his brother’s box, how Beast didn’t even know he had a brother, how he asks to be called James. It’s powerful stuff for a character who is often too unaffected by everything. Aaron is always challenging and changing Logan, and it’s made him more interesting than he’s been in ages. That final revelation about the contents of Dog’s box was very powerful. This was the final issue of Ramon Perez’s stint as artist, and it was a good one to go out on, I’ve really enjoyed his stuff here, it’s perfect for the wild and woolly tone that Aaron, Bachalo and Bradshaw have established, I hope he gets another gig at Marvel.